Saturday, April 28, 2012

SF - The New Steed: "The Beetle"

I knew I needed a bike from before I even got here. You just can't live in the city without a bike. I soon learned, though, that you can't take bikes on BART during rush hour. You can, however, take a folding bike. So that started me on a bit of research on that little sub-world of consumption. Turns out there are cheaper ones like Schwinn that you can buy at Target, middle range ones, with Dahon being the big name there that are sold at bike stores and finally insane high-end ones (I'm talking like $1,500) for idiot bike nerds. I kept my finger hovered over the refresh button for folding bikes on craigslist for a week or so until I found one that fit most of my needs for a decent price. It's a Dahon one-speed, been through two owners, a bit of deterioration in the headset and rear hub, but overall runs fine and doesn't look brand new or fancy. I paid $140. The equivalent brand new is $300, so that seems a pretty good deal. It shaves about 10-20 minutes off the commute and turns my rage at waiting for the bus into joy at never being passed by the bus on the same route.

You may know that my primary steed is The Moth. Light, white and deadly efficient, The Moth is a legend on the streets. You may have encountered it as a soft, off-white blurring and a slight feeling of disorientation as I blow by you going up St-Laurent. I shall christen my new, Bay Area mount, The Beetle. It's black and low to the ground. While the moth flies over your head, dazing your senses, the beetle burrows beneath you, undermining the ground you are riding on and leaving you in a pile of rubble. Either way, you're fucked.

I present to you, The Beetle!

On BART when it is allowed to be (no handicapped people were displaced for the taking of this photo)

1 comment:

Why briques du neige?

When I first moved to Montréal, I was obsessed with the quantity of accumulated snow in the winter. I came up with a scheme to design a snow-brick making tool and hire out my services to people where I would turn all the snow in their yard to bricks and then stack it neatly. This enterprise, named briques du neige, would also be an excellent way to learn about and integrate myself into my new community. Unfortunately, before I was able to launch my plan, the Japanese invented Yuki-Taro and made me redundant. So my project morphed itself into this blog, kept the title (including the minor grammatical error which perfectly captures my functional but erroneous french) and the mission to better understand this crazy city and the Quebec culture that is such a crucial and complex part of the Canadian story.

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About Me

1/3 American, 1/3 Canadian, 1/3 Montrealer, when I'm not working for the planet and living my lucky life, I hang out on the internet and write about culture and language in Montreal, books and movies. I also rant on a wide range of subjects and try to do that here so my wife doesn't have to be the only one to suffer.